Everyone over 60 should retire so their jobs can go to younger people.
Okay, listen up. This only applies to people who want to retire. In other words, those who hate the soul-sucking torture they’ve been going through for forty years, have a pension plan and are one asinine remark away from murdering a co-worker should be allowed to put themselves out of their misery and into a Florida condo.
Newsflash! That doesn’t go for all of us.
To some of us retirement = old age = death. These are the people who are going to keep working if it kills them, which it probably will, especially if they end up getting a death sentence for murdering people in the office.
Others had so much fun bumming around in their younger years that they didn’t get around to saving for retirement. Social Security won’t support the eating habits of an ant, let alone a person. So, until their juicy memoirs become bestsellers, this bunch has to either keep working or win the Powerball jackpot.
There are other oldsters who are not into starting new careers after retirement and who would be bored out of their toupees doing things around the house. They would be itching to go back to work after about three weeks of watching old Bonanza reruns, volunteering all over the neighborhood and trying to plant petunias.
In other words, if we have a job that we are dying to escape from we’ll voluntarily vacate it and let someone else have it. Other than that, you’ll need a cattle prod to get us out.
Old people are cranky.
Who are you calling cranky? I’m not cranky. You’re cranky! Just because my knees hurt, my arthritis is acting up, nobody pays attention to me and my sucky life didn’t go the way I wanted it to go and now it’s too late … Oops! Never mind.
Old people aren’t interested in sex anymore.
If you believe that, I could sell you a bridge over the East River, very cheap.
This is much closer to the truth:
Just because there’s snow on the roof, that doesn’t mean there’s no fire in the furnace.
Well, okay. Some of us do slow down, but not because there’s no interest in sex. It’s because the parts involved are a little worn out or sagging. This can usually be cured by looking at someone really hot for about five minutes. If that doesn’t work, there’s always Viagra for the men and a good sex toy for the women, preferably a nice, stiff one attached to a man who knows how to use it.
This isn’t true. We don’t hate young people. We just want to smack them a good one sometimes. They deserve it for being stupid and never wanting to listen to our hard-earned wisdom.
What? You say that we were just as stupid when we were young and we never wanted to listen to any old fogies, either?
You know what that means, don’t you? It means that when the youth of today grow older their obnoxious young people will be driving them back to smoking weed!
Karma works!
Brain cells die off as we get older, so people over 50 have a really hard time learning how to operate a computer or a cell phone.
I’ll let you all in on a secret. Older people can learn anything they want to learn, if they want to be bothered. The thing is, a lot of our age group can’t be bothered, especially if they can’t see any real use for something. This kind of person will carry a cell phone for convenience, but use it only for making phone calls. Most of the time he/she forgets to turn it on. As for technical knowledge, why go through all the trouble to train yourself when you can just get your 10 year old grandchild to show you?
You see, at our more mature ages, we have come to realize that we don’t have as much time left as we used to think we did. Time has become more precious to us. We have to either budget out our years or try to cram in everything we wished we had done before. To some people, learning how to press buttons on a machine takes second place to learning how to snorkel or having wild sex on a beach in Mexico.
Then you have people like me, who are gadget-happy. We’ll try out just about anything mechanical, as long as we can afford it. This not only includes computer software and cell phones, but Kindles, Keurig coffeemakers, iPads, DVD players and anything else you can think of. Case in point: I have learned enough HTML to be able to type and post this masterpiece so that it looks like I want it to look. I have been told that I am unusual for my age group, and some of my contemporaries look at me like I just dropped in from a galaxy far, far away, but I’m not the only techie wannabe who is over 60. You just have to look a little harder to find us.
The next time you see an oldster on the street, think to yourself, “That must be a really fascinating person.”
I can relate to this on sooo many levels! All I want to do in life now is write—well, that and stalk old boyfriends on Facebook. The Hubs is different—-he hates social media, hates working in the corporate world and looks forward to retirement…..which to him means being a crossing guard at a school. That’s how he wants to spend his free time. I say we need to gas up the RV and get the hell out of Dodge.
I just want to write and sing.
It would also be nice to ride the carousel in Central Park, take rides on the Staten Island Ferry, FINALLY take a trip to Italy and try to soak up some family roots …
*Sigh*
I can’t do those things so easily while working full-time, but at least I have an income coming in!
My parents are 68 and 78. When my husband met my mother, he tried to pick something up for her. She smirked and lifted it herself, all 80 pounds, like it was nothing. She’s a beast. My dad learned to play the guitar and harmonica at 75 and goes around playing in clubs. When I meet people who have these thoughts, I just wonder…don’t you people have parents? Why the disrespect? That drives me crazy.
We’re living longer now than we used to, and we have to get used to that. If you retire at 65, you might have something like 1/4 of your life left!
Spending all those years in a rocking chair waiting for death is kind of wasteful and dumb, right?
No way would I just sit around after retirement; I’ve got books to write.
Youngsters have a preconception that older people can’t remember what it was like to be young and that we dislike the young for reminding us how forgetful we are, and, and . . . what was I talking about?
The trick to staying young is simple. Don’t act your age. Not only is acting your age no fun at all, it makes you old too soon.
On the other hand, if there is something you really don’t want to do (like climb a ladder to hang a picture or volunteer for the church choir) you can always say, “I’m too old for that.” That works, too.
This brought back so many memories of the years I co-managed a retirement community. Boy, did I learn a lot about geriatrics in those days.
Hehe! Yes, we love to shock the unaware.
I don’t think of retirement the way most people do. To me, “retirement” means “more time to write”.
I feel the same way. Unfortunately, I fall into the “had so much fun bumming around” group, so I have to keep working until I write that bestseller.
I remember when I was young, and thought I’d be able to quit my day job after that first book sold. By the end of this year I’ll have my fifth book out, with no end to the day job in sight … but on the bright side, I still *have* a day job.
Bill Y Withers was on he money when he sang “Grandma’s Hands” about the amount of wisdom that Grandma had to offer and that guy knows how to write lyrics.
Bill, thanks for introducing me to this song. I just listened to it on YouTube. I have always like Bill Withers, but hadn’t heard this song.
I just listened to it, too. Thanks, Bill!